Give & Take Among Friends Ch 5 Fighting through the shrubbery
I slept restlessly, tossing and turning, thinking about the events of the previous evening.
Toward morning I fell into a deeper sleep, and had a weird dream with erotic imagery: I was on a medieval estate, and encountered a maiden whose facial features were unclear, but I felt great passion for her. We went into some bushes bordering the manor house and I began fucking her standing up against the wall, a few feet below a balcony overhead. Then a princess wearing a crown and long gown come out on the balcony looking intently toward the distant horizon. I saw to my discomfort the princess was Lila, and fearing she would look down and see me fucking the maiden, I put my hands on the girl's shoulders and pushed her down, trying to lower us further into the bushes out of sight, even as I continued fucking her. She yelled "Hypocrite. Coward." I looked down to shush her, and her features wee now discernible. She had morphed into Rachel.
That woke me up. The light of mid-morning was flowing through the windows, brightening the room. Birds chirped outside the open window. I looked to my left and found I was alone in bed. The aroma of brewed coffee wafted upstairs from the kitchen. Groggily, I washed the sleep from my eyes, threw on shorts, followed the coffee scent to the source, poured a cup and proceeded to the sun room.
Lila was seated on the small settee. She was still in her robe, knees drawn up, bare feet resting on the cushions. A half-empty coffee cup was in hand, as she looked out the windows. I dropped down beside her. She did not look at me.
"Overslept," I said, needlessly. She nodded. We sat there without speaking for the eternity of 20 seconds or so, a palpable tension clouding what would otherwise have been a beautiful late-August morning.
"I don't know how to say this," she uttered in a heavy voice, indicating she had not slept all that well either.
I felt a tension growing in my chest.
"After you and Rachel went away last night, I had sex with Eli." She continued gazing out the window, seeming to hold her breath, as if fearing my reaction.
"I know," I said. I also found it a little difficult to breathe.
"You know?" Pause. "He told you?"
I thought a moment, and decided I did not want to make a voyeur's full confession just yet. I wanted to hear more first.
"He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. The fact that he was there all alone when Rachel and I got back, silent and serious, spoke for him. And you seemed in another world when I came upstairs. It was evident something significant happened."
She was quiet for a moment. She looked down at the floor.
"Do you hate me?" she asked, her sad voice almost choking.
I put my arm around her shoulders. "No. The grass was strong, the atmosphere charged. We're only human. If anything, I blame myself. If I had stayed in the room, it probably wouldn't have happened. I didn't stay because I felt it better to butt out and let you navigate according to your own instincts." There was another pause. I asked her, "Do you want to tell me about it." Pause. "And about how you feel now?"
After a moment, she answered, "It's so hazy, almost like I dreamed it. Like one of those very realistic dreams, where you're not sure whether it's fantasy or reality."
I could relate to that, but had to ask. "Well, let's say it was a dream. Was it a good dream? How would you rate it on a scale of one to ten?"
She looked at me curiously. "The dream?"
"No, the... Oh hell, for starters, was it better sex than you get from me?"
She looked at me. Her expression was still serious, but her lips quivered slightly. Was she trying to suppress a smile?
"It could never be that good -- either in a dream or the real world."
"Truly?" I asked, that heavy feeling in my chest easing some.
"Oh, yes," she said, tentatively touching my cheek with her fingers, her lips almost forming a smile. "You're my love," she said. Her eyes grew moist, as she quoted a lyric from one of her favorite songs, but not Solomon's this time: "Nobody does it better."
I put my other arm around her too, pulling her close. We kissed, tenderly. She threw her arms around my back and pressed her cheek next to mine.
"I was so afraid you'd hate me," she said, breaking into tears. I stroked her hair.
"I could never hate you, darling Lila. I love you." There were tears in my eyes too. After a pause, I added, "Anger doesn't enter into my feelings at all. My biggest emotion is fear. I'm afraid of losing you, that you'll realize there are other guys out there who you can feel strongly about, and maybe some of them are better than me."
Now she was crying and laughing at the same time. She broke our embrace and looked at me.
"I never realized you were so insecure. You always seem so sure of things."
"Well, that's an illusion," I said. "At least it is this time." We hugged again.
"Rachel told me once," she began, "guys always put their prowess as lovers near the top of their ego list, and are always insecure about it, thinking that the girls they take up with measure them that way too. Rachel said that's why guys put such an emphasis on size -- they're afraid they don't measure up to a woman's expectations, and we'll leave for the king size. If it makes you feel any better, I think you measure up fine."
I was glad to measure up, but did not need a Rachel channels Freud through Lila scenario.
"Thanks, but my status as Head Stud is only part of the equation. Another insecurity is that you'll enjoy other guys more than me emotionally and intellectually, as well as physically. Eli evidently wasn't a disappointment to you, and so, that may open the door to further exploration and evaluation."
She lowered her eyes. "I still feel too guilty to think much about this," she said. "I've liked Eli for a long time. You already knew that I had some small fantasies about doing with him what just actually happened. But a fantasy come true doesn't change the way I feel about you. If you weren't so big in my life, who knows how my feelings about Eli or other men might grow to fill the void. But you are in my life, thank God, and I'm so happy that you seem so... understanding... and forgiving."
